Cuba. Spanish experts in real estate administration and the management of vacation rentals participate in Cuba in a forum in which they will present their experience in this field, in the midst of the tourist "boom" that the island is experiencing, where the state sector coexists with private income to tourists.
"In the tourist aspect we have a tradition of decades in the management of flats, seasonal rentals, coming from foreigners, and from those points of view the contribution of the Spanish experience is fundamental for Cuba," Salvador Díez, president of the General Council of Property Administrators of Spain, told EFE.
The expert, who participated in the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana in the opening of the "Seminar on the administration of real estate in Spain and Cuba", said that the challenges for the Caribbean country are the opening to new forms of exploitation and the need to rehabilitate buildings.
It is, said Díez, "to deepen these two lines, to open up a little so that other operators can access and that other ways of exploiting real estate from the tourist point of view can be analyzed, given the exquisite natural and cultural heritage that the country has."
In Cuba, where the State concentrates most of the property, hotel operations also depend on the authorities or joint ventures with tourism multinationals, although the authorization of individuals to rent rooms to tourists is helping to meet the growing demand of the sector.
In addition, one of the fruits of the thawing process between the United States and Cuba initiated almost two years ago was the entry into the country of the "giant" of private online rentals, Airbnb, but at the moment only allows you to rent houses on the island from other countries.
The second of the aspects in which the experts will influence in these days is that of the restoration of the infrastructures.
"Insist on the need to rehabilitate the buildings. Little by little, take steps that provide cities with these improvements, that embellish their heritage and also configure security for their occupants," said Díez.
Cuban cities have a rich architectural heritage, but much of it is in a serious state of deterioration, a situation that the country's authorities blame on the economic blockade that the United States has imposed on the island for more than five decades.
The president of the property managers of Spain pointed out that the speakers from his country can "bring a great experience in rehabilitation".
"Our country has yet to complete that task, but if we look historically at the last decade, our cities have nothing to do with what was there forty or fifty years ago," he said.
